


By Those Who Show Up

by fluffernutter8



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Politics, F/M, Political Campaigns, Steggy Positivity Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 17:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15393684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: But it really started like this: Peggy owed Angie a favor.Steve's a congressional primary candidate in need of a campaign manager. Luckily, Peggy happens to be a campaign manager.





	By Those Who Show Up

It might have all started when Peggy quit on Jack Thompson. She’d never done anything like that before, but by two months before the primary she didn’t care that Thompson was a party up and comer - he was squirrely, a liar, liable to switch viewpoints depending on who he was speaking with, and though Peggy had worked with all of that before as a hazard of the job, Thompson didn’t _listen_ to her. Her advice - her hard-won, professional advice - was greeted with an arch, dubious, “Let’s see how things shake out,” and even when he followed her instructions, they milled around in his brain until he claimed them as his own brilliant solutions. One day he came off of the stage, tossing her another smirk, and she just couldn’t stand it anymore, and didn’t think she should have to.

It might have started when Peggy had cleaned her apartment spotlessly for the first time in...how long ago had she bought it? She finished three books, finally watched the entirety of The West Wing so none of her colleagues could act superior anymore, and was reduced to comparing the coffee at the corner cafe versus the two Starbucks franchises a block to the left and the right. Peggy wasn’t exactly built for vacation.

But it really started like this: Peggy owed Angie a favor.

“Give me the two minutes,” Peggy says, coming up to where her friend is waiting and passing the spot, expecting Angie to fall into step like the campaign professionals she was used to.

“Yes, ma’am,” Angie salutes comically, but begins to walk beside her anyway. Peggy raises an eyebrow over her Starbucks cup and twirls a finger in a ‘go on’ gesture. “Okay, his name is Steve Rogers. He’s from here originally, fought overseas for a bunch of years, and now he’s running to be the congressman from the district he grew up in.”

Just decided one day to run for Congress… Peggy already feels a headache coming on. She’s aware enough about the race to know he’s running in his primary against a long-term incumbent in a heavily Democratic district, which makes her wonder just what kind of longshots Steve Rogers is interested in.

“Who else is on the campaign team?”

“It’s a lot of volunteers,” Angie tells her, “and his staff mostly seems to be the guys he served with.”

Right, military. She can work with military. Peggy swallows the last of her coffee grimly, and follows Angie up the steps of the nondescript building which apparently serves as the headquarters for Rogers for Congress.

“What exactly is it about him that has you so convinced?” Peggy asks as they walk down the brown carpeted hallway. She’d never known Angie to be involved in politics at all until the Steve Rogers button had showed up on her apron at work, but now if it’s not phone banking or knocking on doors after a long shift, it’s bringing up the campaign platform while out at a bar.

Angie shakes her head. “You’ll get it when you talk to him. He’s just really...sturdy. When you listen to him, you know that he’s not just making promises because that’s what you want to hear. He really believes them, and he believes he can do it, and if not, he’ll be sleeping on the floor of his office trying.”

Angie opens the door to an office suite, and Peggy is overrun by the familiarity of a campaign office: the raised voices over an underlying layer of rote calls from the volunteers, the scent of old coffee and envelope glue, the flash of TV and computer screens in various corners. And there, in the center of the room, sleeves rolled up on his slightly too big white dress shirt, is Steve Rogers.

 _Oh, shit_ , Peggy thinks, just as Angie says, considering, from beside her, “Oh yeah. He’s also super hot.”

* * *

Later, Steve will swear that he turned around because he sensed Peggy entering the room, but in reality he probably turned because Bucky looked over his shoulder, raised his eyes to the heavens and said, “That must be your new campaign manager with Angie. Thank God. I was getting too old for this.”

“This aged you more than Afghanistan?” Steve jokes absently, too busy following his new campaign manager’s every move to pay much attention.

“Hell yeah,” says Bucky. “I was over there ten years and only lost an arm. Six months of doing this with you and I’ve basically lost my life.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m thinning up top, Steve, I swear to God.”

Steve claps him on the shoulder. “You can pull off bald,” he assures his best friend, trying to look appropriately busy and professional, and not at all like he’s lying in desperate wait to shake this woman’s hand.

Luckily, he’s shaken so many hands over the past months of the campaign that muscle memory takes over; he doesn’t accidentally squeeze too tightly or let his hand fall blankly from hers as he stares at her face, and he lets go after an appropriate amount of time. Only Bucky gives him an odd glance before getting down to business.

“The conference room’s over here,” he says, leading Peggy and Angie over to a couple of chairs crammed around a table in a corner of the office. “We really appreciate you coming.”

“Sorry things aren’t a little bit nicer,” Steve says, wondering if offering her the crappy coffee they have would be more or less polite. “We’re only here for another few weeks, so it seemed stupid to waste money on better offices.”

“That’s alright.” She seats herself lightly in one of the chairs, somehow managing to take in the whole room and still seem focused on him. “As you said, it’s only until the election, but I might be able to find room in the budget for something a bit nicer.”

Bucky coughs. “‘Budget’ is kind of a nice way to put it. A good euphemism.”

“We spend almost all of our funding on outreach efforts: voter registration drives, campaign materials, that kind of thing,” Steve says. “But we only do small donations from real people, so the pool is a little limited to begin with.” She’s staring at him in a very attentive way. He adds, “And anyway, my job right now is to be talking to the people out there, hearing their concerns and letting them know how I can help, how I want to help, so a fancy office...it’s not necessary.”

“That,” says Peggy Carter, whose eyes, he learns, sometimes sparkle for no reason at all, “is very refreshing to hear.” She sets her bag on the carpet beside her chair. “Let’s start with an overview of the campaign platform, and we’ll go from there.”

* * *

Peggy worked her first campaign while still in college: she was an intern’s intern when she started, but came up with one good slogan idea and gained an intern of her own. She was hooked immediately after, a poly sci/business double major with a purpose. She’s built a reputation since then, piece by piece, working up through local to regional and then national political campaigns. She hasn’t won all of them, but she’s been satisfied with the ethical conduct of each one, and she runs a tight ship: leaks aren’t tolerated, and a hot mic has never dared to make itself known in her presence. She doesn’t intend to run the Rogers campaign any differently, even as a volunteer.

“I need to know any secrets you might be hiding,” she says the first time she meets with the candidate alone. She holds his gaze so he knows that she’s serious. “I won’t record them, but I need to hear anything that you think might be waiting to incriminate you.”

He shakes his head, hands resting on the folding table that serves as his desk. “I don’t have anything like that.”

“I want to be able to protect you, but I can’t do that without getting ahead of things,” she tells him. She holds up a hand, ticking off, “A secret pregnancy or abortion - anything to do with children, really - an off-color remark that you made while you were drunk at a bar, an employee of questionable legal status, anything. You’re steadily gaining in the polls, and if they have something that they’ve been keeping quiet because you weren’t a threat, it will come out soon.”

“I’m not being coy about it,” he says, shrugging openly. “I graduated high school, where I was basically invisible, before the iPhone was invented, and then went to war.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I think we both know that even being overseas with limited contact can’t help you entirely avoid being recorded doing something that you wouldn’t want your mother or your future constituents seeing.”

“Unless they have a problem with me punching a couple of assholes on base, there’s nothing to worry about.”

After a moment of observing him, she nods and moves on. “What about any military action we need to be concerned about?”

He sits up straighter. “Even if there was, the missions we ran over there are classified. They could run commercials of footage with my face in the center and I likely wouldn’t be able to comment on it.”

“Is there footage like that?”

“Course not.” He leans back a bit, not casual, just taking her in. “I pretty carefully analyzed the orders we were given, so in some ways, I was a shitty army officer. But in other ways, we were the best you could ask for, Ms. Carter.”

She’s had clients in the past answer these types of questions with open answers that disturbed her, and yet she swallowed her disgust and pushed through. But she thinks that if she’d heard something like that from Steve Rogers, she would have been disappointed. There’s something about him, perhaps this sense Angie mentioned, that makes her feel hopeful about politics for the first time in years.

“Please,” she says,” call me Peggy.”

* * *

Bucky is Steve’s best friend, and he always will be. In combat, he was always exactly on top of things. Steve wouldn’t have wanted anyone else as his right hand. As a campaign manager, he had wanted to retire starting on day one.

The day after Peggy takes over, she greets Steve as he walks in by saying, “We’ve got a rally coming up next Sunday, so Saturday will be media day. TV in the morning, radio in the afternoon, and then we’ll film a commercial, and if we don’t have the budget for airing it, we’ll get it out on social media. We’ll pay for it to be well put together - competent underdog plays well, and we’ll get younger voters better with online distribution anyway.”

Steve blinks and comes to sit across from her. She takes her feet off the desktop and faces him. “Can we start again? What TV and what radio are we talking about?”

She unlocks her phone and hands it to him. It’s open to an email, and he starts to read, glad that she hadn’t asked him why he hadn’t already read it when his email address is right in the sent field. He scrolls for a moment.

“The ABC affiliate?” he asks, glancing up at her. “We couldn’t even get them to return a phone call.”

She gives a little shrug. “Getting media to pay attention, that’s part of the job.”

He gives the phone back to her and smiles a little. “Is it technically a job if we aren’t paying you?” Angie, in trying to convince them to let her bring Peggy in, had assured them that her best friend was bored and desperate for something to do between jobs. Steve still can’t help but feel embarrassed that a professional is donating her valuable time to him. He’s done a little reading about her (Margaret Elizabeth Carter, birthday April 9th, one brother...she has a Wikipedia page, and he has Google, alright?) and knows how valuable Peggy Carter is, and “free” is certainly the only way he can afford her. He wonders how she can look at the campaign that has no room at all in its budget for her and agree that it’s worth her efforts anyway.

“Course it is,” she says casually. “It just means that I’m better at negotiating media than negotiating my own salary.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

She has, he notices, a wonderful smile. “Then maybe I know exactly how much I’m worth, and I just believe in the cause.”

“Right,” he says stupidly. “Good.” Then, shaking himself, he adds, “Because cultural and societal factors are some of the most difficult to legislate to ensure fair pay…”

Her smile widens.

* * *

Peggy spends part of the next few days touching up the office for the cameras, and getting Steve’s shirts tailored. She meets Jim Morita, the communications guy, and James Falsworth, a fellow Brit nicknamed Monty who’s in charge of scheduling and advance, and Jacques Dernier, whose moderate successes organizing fundraising efforts she chalks up to how intimidating Americans find rapid-fire French. She has them lead her through the details of their jobs, then gives a few tips and adjusts some things, although they’re doing remarkably well for absolute amateurs in the political game.

Over a lunch of hastily grabbed chicken salads, she asks Steve if he’s purposely only hired people with the same name, and he rolls his eyes and introduces her to Timothy Dugan (she refuses to use that asinine nickname) who’s serving as a boisterous and slightly slapdash volunteer coordinator, and Gabe Jones, the head of the legal team, such as it is. She puts Bucky Barnes in Dugan’s place because Steve says that his strength as campaign manager had been organizing people, and has Dugan as a sort of jack of all trades, which better suits his energy.

By Saturday when the cameras drop by to film, things are running more smoothly but still with the scrappy, anti-establishment feeling that characterizes Steve’s campaign and has galvanized many of the voters. After some B-roll and quick quotes from volunteers and staff, Steve and the reporter go over to the area that Peggy has arranged for a longer interview.

At first the stools she’d chosen seem to have potential for disaster - Steve’s body is too long and he has trouble balancing - but after a minute he gets it and settles in, and the youthful, casual dynamism is just what she’d hoped for. She stands behind the camera watching Steve run capably through the responses they’ve worked up together, distilling his policies and his feelings about his home district into quick answers for an audience.

Toward the end of the interview, the reporter (Ken or Chad or something like that; he’s supposed to be the best but looks vaguely like an android) asks with a little laugh, “I guess I should have started with this, but why did you decide to run in the first place? A primary challenge to such a long term figure is unusual. Why put in the effort, and what do you think will make you better than the sitting congressman?”

“I think that the congressman is failing the district, the same way he has been for a long time.” Peggy nods. She and Steve had decided that because he was lucky enough not to have an optics problem if he started with strong and potentially abrasive honesty, they might as well use it. “I went away to war and a decade later when I came back, he was still making and breaking the same promises.” Steve pauses, and Peggy wonders if he’s maybe forgotten how to finish off the answer, but then he takes a deep breath and starts to speak again. Across the room, Bucky’s head comes up.

“I know that for a lot of people I’m the same face that’s gotten them nothing over the years. I’m the face of gentrification in this community, and of rhetoric that’s good enough to support but a voting record that didn’t come close.” Steve folds his hands on his knees and leans forward a little, eyes right on the interviewer. “I was a sick kid. And my mother, who didn’t go back home to Ireland even for a funeral because she couldn’t afford to lose the hours and didn’t want anyone saying that Sarah Rogers was unreliable, swallowed her pride and took money from the charities that certain members of Congress allege are a suitable replacement for better health care policy. We still almost didn’t survive the medical bills. I’ve seen the budget for our military, and in ten years in the army, I never understood where it all went. That’s money that isn’t even wanted and is being siphoned away from areas of the budget that could use it most, including efforts at diplomacy.

“I decided to run because no one else is. I’m not planning to buy a home down in Washington if I get there. I’ll be happy if someone else with better strategies wants to take over after a term. But I don’t think this can wait. There are things that we need to get done _now_. And I’m willing to push and keep pushing on the issues that are important, the issues that people I’ve gone out to talk to in the district have told me are important to them.”

This isn’t the first time that a candidate has gone off script, but Steve hasn’t cursed at anyone, hasn’t trapped himself in words she’ll have to cleverly walk back later. _It’s not exactly a soundbite_ , Peggy thinks, _but it’ll do._

* * *

Later, after everyone has gone home, Steve sits at his desk, tipped back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. The TV people had said the interview went well, and Peggy says they’ll get ratings information and some polling tomorrow but she agrees. It’s starting to dawn on him that he might actually be doing pretty well at this.

“Having second thoughts?”

He startles, bringing his feet down awkwardly to the floor. Apparently he isn’t as alone as he thought.

“I was just wondering if it’s too late to back out, because I don’t know if I ever want to do another TV interview.”

She sits across from him, and pulls from her purse a bottle of Scotch and two shot glasses. She slides him the one with the Capitol on it and keeps the Statue of Liberty for herself, although he almost wants to trade.

“You did well,” she says. He trusts her assessment, but wonders too at the extra warmth in her voice. “I would have perhaps preferred if you’d kept it just a bit shorter, but you came off as genuine, and I think you made people really understand where you were coming from.”

Steve downs his shot. “I didn’t even tell the whole truth,” he says pensively.

“What do you mean?” She pours him another.

“It was the guys that really made me do it.” He holds his glass up the the light, examines the lovely color of the drink and wonders at the careful proportions of paint he’d have to mix to recreate it. He puts the glass back down and looks at Peggy. “I don’t mean that they forced me to do it. But we came back and we’d meet to catch up, and the stories they’d tell…” His fiddles with his glass again while she sips her Scotch, waiting. “Gabe called me once to pick him up. He was at the police station and he knew I lived close. Apparently someone had seen him walking home one night and called the cops because they thought he looked suspicious. And when the police showed up, they wouldn’t believe that he just lived there. He showed them his license and offered to give them a tour of his apartment and they arrested him for talking back, for not cooperating. So I went down to the station to get him and he was just quiet. Didn’t say anything until we got to his door. And then he told me that this was exactly what happened to his great-grandfather and his grandfather and his dad: he put his life on hold, put himself to danger serving the country, and when he came back people just saw another black man stepping out of line.”

It is a fascinating paradox about Peggy Carter, Steve thinks, that she can look so relaxed and so alert at the same time. Her hair is up in a casual ponytail and she’s toed off her shoes beneath the table, but she looks at him so attentively that he thinks tomorrow she’ll be able to quote back what he said word for word even as she pours herself another shot.

“One time we all went out together and Monty and Jim were arguing when they came in. Later I got Monty to tell me why. He said that they’d been coming down the street and someone told Jim to go back to China. So Jim said he’d maybe like to see the Great Wall, but he’d have a lot of trouble living there, seeing as he was born in California and also his family was Japanese, and walked away. Monty wanted to make it a bigger issue, but Morita told him that if he did that every time, he’d never get anything done. It was hours later, and Monty was still angry. He said to me that he actually was here on a visa and no one had ever thought to tell him to go back home. And I remembered that it had been the same way with my ma: people complimented her accent and asked if she still had family back in Ireland. No one ever tried to call ICE on her.

“And that’s not even getting started on everything with Buck…” Steve shakes his head and tosses back his second shot, because he can’t afford to be trapped in memories of those months of dealing with the VA, getting crappy coffee for Bucky’s mother as they say in endless waiting rooms, the way the hold music would settle into his dreams because he’d spend hours a day trying to find a real person to talk to. And Bucky had been injured in combat, clearly entitled to help and care. There were so many who needed the same things and could barely get anyone to say that they deserved to be treated humanely.

“There’s a lot broken in this country,” he tells Peggy. “I don’t believe all the same things that I did before I joined the army, but I still believe this: we can get better. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel to do it and it’ll take time and effort and willingness, we’ll have to change the way people think and that’s not easy to do, but I think we can get there. But only if we try.”

“Well,” Peggy says, tipping back her shot, “I don’t think anyone can say that you haven’t tried.” She flips over her glass on the tabletop and smiles cheekily at him. “But once again, poor marks for brevity.”

* * *

No one really knows who Peggy is at campaign events, so when she’s able to take a few minutes to step away, she likes to observe. The energy is high and the weather has held beautifully. She scans the crowd for misanthropic faces, but sees only smiling supporters, a wonderful cross section of all the people Steve will be representing. She knows that she should be making sure that people are taking pictures and that the social media presence is being well handled, but for a moment she just allows herself to enjoy.

Steve’s speech has finished and he’s taking some time to meet people and mingle. Just now he’s kneeling beside now a little girl as she uses fat face paint crayons to decorate his cheek with a little American flag. Yards away, where he can’t even see her, Peggy watches him laugh and it makes her smile too.

He finds her later, as she’s talking with Jacques and Jones about a potential large donor who called that afternoon. There’s nothing technically wrong with it and it could do them some good, but it doesn’t exactly fit with their ethos…

“How do you think it went?” he asks.

“Overall, well.” She nods to where a line is still in place at the side, even though the event is officially over. “The voter registration still had a crowd.”

“Do you have time to go over some numbers?”

She checks her watch and makes a face. “I’ve got a call back at the office, and then a dinner.”

“Oh,” he says, putting his hands in his pockets. “Sure. We can do it tomorrow.”

It’s a perfectly reasonable solution, and yet… “I should be done around ten. Why don’t you call me at home then?”

He calls at precisely 10:00. The conversation about the numbers lasts about five minutes. They don’t get off the phone until after midnight.

* * *

“Which do you prefer, traveling or local races?”

“Local, absolutely.” He thinks that he can hear her pouring a bowl of cereal in the background. They’ve been talking every night, and he hopes that she doesn’t notice that they barely touch on campaign issues. He’s learned how she and Angie became best friends (Angie was her waitress and helped her get out of a nightmare date) and told her stories about himself and the boys overseas. He has the feeling she’s aware of how sidetracked they’ve gotten, but luckily she hasn’t said anything so far. He likes getting to speak with her at the end of the day. “There’s nothing glamorous about staying in hotels or rental apartments for months on end, and politicians are largely the same everywhere.” He clears his throat loudly. “Present company excluded, of course,” she adds, and he can hear the smile in her voice.

“Then why not just stay local?” He switches his phone to the other ear and shifts so his entire side doesn’t fall asleep.

“Being open to all candidates across the country is part of the job.” It was definitely cereal he heard pouring earlier; he can hear her crunching on it now, even as she disguises it as a considering pause. He grins. “And sometimes the best, most exciting campaigns were ones I had to travel for, and I don’t regret working for any of those candidates.” She pauses again, chewing slowly. “The travel and the time I put into my work broke up my engagement, but I still don’t regret it.”

He pauses too, almost wishing he had his own bowl of cereal for distraction. “You were engaged?”

“Yes,” she says matter of factly. “To a man named Fred, at the beginning of my career.”

“And he broke it off because you were focusing on your work?”

“Yes,” she says again. “He’d liked that I was driven at the beginning, but after we got engaged, he didn’t understand why I wasn’t becoming less so. Apparently he was under the impression that the only reason a woman would care about her work was to interest a man, and once I’d found one, I should reveal my true interest in planning my wedding and preparing the home.”

“What a putz.” It just slips out, but Peggy sputters a laugh that turns into an unending waterfall of giggling.

“I wasn’t entirely fair to him,” she says when she’s done. “I was still scrambling a bit, taking on more jobs than I needed to because I was building a reputation. He took it to excess, but I could have contributed a bit more time to the relationship.”

With the phone pressed to his ear, if Steve closes his eyes, it’s like she’s in the room beside him. “Peggy,” he says, “I first met you a month ago, and I know you’re worth the wait.”

For a minute she just breathes, and he finds himself falling into synch with her. Then she tells him, “When you’re elected, you can pass a bill reminding him of that fact,” and it makes him laugh instead.

* * *

Steve does an admirable job shaking hands and greeting supporters at the party the night of the primary, but Peggy can see that he just wants to be surrounded by friends. And as the night goes on, she spots him often in conversation with Jones, with Dugan, with Bucky, talking with the friends who know him best, who pat his shoulder and boost his spirits as he does the same for them in return.

He’s in the center of the room, though, when the announcement comes across declaring him the Democratic nominee on the ballot for November. He stares, stone still for a moment, and a newspaper photographer takes a picture just as a smile begins to break across his face. (It runs on the front page the next day, the headline beginning, “Gobsmacked!”)

Much later, as the celebration winds down and the campaign staff devolves into the team of boys that they are, Peggy finds Steve alone.

“You’ll get a real staff after this,” she tells him, smiling. “The DCCC won’t necessarily be the friendliest, but they’ll do their job.”

“I think Bucky will be glad to get out of the political game,” Steve says. His best friend has gotten so tipsy that he’s hanging off of Dugan’s neck, and everyone in their right mind knows that when there’s alcohol in the picture, Dugan’s not a steady bet: he’s always the one to put himself under the table first. When Peggy looks away from the spectacle, she finds Steve already looking intently at her. “Are you sure you can’t stay though?”

“I have to move on for now,” she tells him, and watches as his lightness shuts down, tucking itself compactly away behind a serious facade. “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished here, though, and I have no doubt that you’ll make a wonderful congressman.”

Steve says, courteously but fervently, “I really can’t thank you enough. We were muddling through before you came, but you brought us over the finish line. I’m really grateful for everything that you’ve done.”

He’s not just being polite, and Peggy knows it. “We do good work together,” she says.

He puts out a hand, and she takes it. “There is one more thing,” she tells him as they shake. “I’m off Ohio after this, but I’ve been offered a new position starting next year.”

“What’s that?”

“The congressman for the Massachusetts seventh wanted a chief of staff,” she says. “He thought I’d be good at the job.”

“He’s right about that.” His grin begins to grow slowly. “So you’re looking to move to Washington next year?”

“Maryland and Virginia are candidates too,” she tells him casually. “But yes, I’ll be employed by the blight on the country that is the United States Congress.”

He tucks his hands into his pockets, rocking on his heels. “What a coincidence. Maybe we can give each other tips about how to stay human down there.”

She allows herself the beginnings of a smile as well. “That’s a plan. If you have the time once you’re in the government, perhaps we could plan for dinner?”

His smile is at this point stretched fully across his face. “Trust me, Peggy,” he says, “I’ll make time. Let me know when and I’ll be there.”

And like 58% of his future constituents, she believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> Ending off for free choice day on an AU note, because why not?
> 
> The current congressman for the seventh district of Massachusetts is Rep. Mike Capuano, who is both my congressman and Chris Evans's uncle.
> 
> Title from whoever inspired the quote that I've taken from The West Wing: "Decisions are made by those who show up."


End file.
